


Save a Horse, Ride a Raptor

by jaguarspot, Jesi_Ki_Kage



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 04:21:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15502200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaguarspot/pseuds/jaguarspot, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jesi_Ki_Kage/pseuds/Jesi_Ki_Kage
Summary: If something happens often enough, it's seen as normal.If something is normal, it’s not scrutinized.And if you're not scrutinized, you can hide in plain sight.For Maggie Sawyer, Red Ranger of the Dino Thunder Power Rangers, hiding in plain sight was nearly second nature.First she was hiding her sexuality. Then it was her secret identity. Now? Now she had to hide the fact that she had been kicked out of her home for a second time in less than four years.





	Save a Horse, Ride a Raptor

If someone were to ask the senior class of Reefside High, they would all say Maggie Sawyer was a jock. And for as long as she’d been living in town, all anyone could ever find her doing or talking about was soccer.

If anyone asked about Kira Ford, they would learn all the girl ever seemed to care about was her music. Always playing her guitar for anyone who would listen.

When it came to Alexandra ‘Alex’ Danvers the reactions were varied. Everyone agreed Alex was a computer nerd, some just added in comments like funny, clever, scary, or teacher’s pet. 

One thing the students of Reefside High agreed on was that the three girls had nothing in common. They were from different worlds, and they had never interacted with each other before.

Then one day, after a mysterious detention with professor Oliver, the three began to hang out and never stopped. They would be seen together at off times and in unusual places. It was not uncommon to find them at Hayley’s Cyber Cafe, and a few weeks later they were shortly joined by the new kid in town, one Lucy Lane. 

They seemed like a very unlikely group, but when the town of Reefside got its very own team of Power Rangers, everyone had more interesting things to talk about than what had caused these very different people to start hanging out together. At least until Alex, Maggie and Lucy started dating. 

Three girls starting one relationship brought the spotlight and the gossip back to the group for a little while, but when the Power Rangers started showing up to their battles riding actual, live  _ velociraptors,  _ everyone forgot about the girls again.

As time went by, and the Rangers pulled more and more impressive feats, no one was around to pay attention to this strange group of teenagers. 

Then the city started getting worse and stronger monsters, and then it was the Rangers themselves who stopped paying attention.

  
  
~*~*~  
  


If something happens often enough, it's seen as normal. 

If something is normal, it’s not scrutinized.

And if you're not scrutinized, you can hide in plain sight.

It wasn’t like Maggie hadn't known this would happen. After all, María Sawyer cared a lot more about her sister than she did about her niece, and she wasn't quiet about it.

“Shame on you, forcing my poor sister to put up with you for so long.”

And, 

“If it were up to me, I would have left you on the streets. But a problem child like you would be caught right away and then the cops would go knock on your poor mother’s door and how could you make her go through that.”

And,

“The second you turn eighteen, you’re out of here.”

So it wasn’t like Maggie hadn’t had clear warning. Almost four years of it. Her finding an ancient alien gem and becoming a Power Ranger had not changed any of that, but it had given her some options.

Months before her eighteenth birthday, Maggie made sure to get a reputation for falling asleep everywhere. The library, the soccer fields’ locker room, leaning against that old tree in the school grounds.

If she intentionally spent the night at every public place she could find right now, no one would look twice when she was sleeping there because she had no choice. Because she had been kicked out again the moment child protection laws no longer applied to her.

When she became a Ranger, at seventeen and three quarter years old, she redoubled her efforts.

Always the first to insist on a team bonding sleepover at Kira's place. Spending the night on Alex’s couch after a movie night. Volunteering to watch Tommy’s latest experiment at the lab overnight. Falling asleep after her shift at the cybercafe knowing Hayley didn't have the heart to wake her. Taking the cafe’s leftovers home to ‘share with her aunt’. Spending a weekend camping under the stars with Lucy’s camping supplies, sharing a tent with her team.

Make it normal, and nobody will look twice at it.

Then, suddenly, it was her birthday. She had her bags packed and was out the door a day early, not wishing to hear whatever words her aunt would have as a going away gift. 

She had her school locker, and her gym locker, and Tommy’s underground lab, so her bags were all stored and protected by the time she walked into the cafe the next day to find a surprise party.

Honestly, she’d almost forgotten birthdays were meant to be celebrated. 

She laughed and played and mingled with everyone. She ate as much as she could and she did her best to keep her girlfriends from noticing anything wrong. If they noticed her being more subdued than usual, neither of them mentioned it.

That night, Alex let them all crash at her place, and Maggie's juggling act began. 

 

~*~*~

 

For the first two weeks no one noticed any change. Maggie slept at everyone's house at least twice and nobody bothered to mention it to the others since it was just Maggie being Maggie.

But then Lucy called for a team meeting. She told them how she’d just discovered her dad was apparently helping the bad guys. She had followed him to a lab where some of the monsters the team fought every day were apparently being made. 

The whole team worried, but Lucy assured them she had everything under control. She was safe, and she was 100% sure her dad did not even suspect she was a Power Ranger. The only problem was, she was going to need them to stop going over to her house for sleepovers. As much as Sam Lane acted indifferent towards his daughter’s friends, his hatred for the Power Rangers was well known. And now that they knew he had the means to actually hurt them if he discovered them, spending time in his house just wasn’t worth the risk to all of them.

Once alone afterwards, Maggie sat in a corner of the lab, musing about what she was gonna do now that one of her places to sleep was compromised.

Then she froze.

One of her teammates, one of her  _ girlfriends,  _ was stuck living with a dangerous Ranger hater, and all Maggie could think about was losing one of her options for sleeping on someone else’s bed and eating someone else’s food? She felt sick. How could she be so selfish? Lucy’s situation was a bad one. And she deserved better than having Maggie worry only about herself.

Beside, Maggie figured that she really shouldn’t be complaining. Lucy’s living situation had crept up on her with no warning. Maggie’s own circumstances had been obvious almost four years before they happened. She’d had time to save up and make plans and prepare for living on her own for the few months before she started college. 

[Of course, none of her plans had prepared her for suddenly becoming a Power Ranger. Her plans to stay in a hotel or rent out a place had gone out the window when her new schedule of always-ready-to-throw-down made it impossible to keep a job, and her new metabolism made feeding herself three times more expensive than normal. But Maggie tried not to think about that. She’d had time to prepare. She should have been ready.]

With a sigh and a shake of her head, Maggie mentally crossed Lucy’s place off from her list of safe places to sleep and resolved to keep an eye on Lucy in case her dad became a bigger problem. Mind made up, she headed to the school for the jacket she kept in her gym locker. It looked like she would be spending the night at the woods.

 

~*~*~

 

She managed for another week and a half before the next bombshell dropped on her plans. 

Alex’s little sister Kara - who’d been away with their older cousin for a semester doing some joint internship-schooling program - was back. At first this seemed fine. Everyone got along with the bundle of energy that was Kara and Kara didn’t seem to question their randomly bailing to handle ranger duties. She would even pull similar disappearing acts on them now and then.

But that was before the start of rainy season.

Before rolling thunder storms that lasted most of the night. Before storms with lightning strikes that lit up the entire sky and could leave an old tree a charred black mess. Most importantly, for Kara, before storms with thunder so loud that it rattled old window panes and left her unprotected ears ringing with echoes of the sound.

Alex explained to them the night after the first major storm that Kara was afraid of thunder. And when her little sister was scared she’d go crawling into bed with Alex. Which for reasons she refused to explain to them meant that they couldn’t sleep over during storm season.

Exactly when Maggie needed a stable shelter the most.

With Kira’s home becoming her last option with a proper bed, Maggie felt the guilt suddenly skyrocket.

She couldn’t just move in with Kira. She already felt like enough of an inconvenience as it was going over just a couple times a week. Besides, Kira wasn’t even her girlfriend. Alex and Lucy were.

Then the constant thunderstorms started causing frequent power outages, and so few people wanted to be outside during the rain anyways, that Haley decided to close the cybercafe and take the chance to do some renovations. 

This was the last straw for Maggie. Not only was her last safe, dry, inconspicuous place to sleep away from school gone, but she was also without a job until Haley reopened. With the way Ranger emergencies could pop up at any second and force her to leave right away, she knew she didn’t have a chance of finding a job under anyone who wasn’t in on the secret. 

When Haley gave them the news, she managed to mask her reaction as being upset that the team’s favorite hangout was temporarily closing. The others echoed her for a bit, and then Haley told everyone to head home. Once she’d gotten a few blocks away from the cafe, Maggie allowed herself a moment to slump on a bus stop’s bench and think. 

She was going to have to fend for herself. Everyone else had their own problems, their own  _ life,  _ and there was no room there for them to be looking after Maggie. She was the Red Ranger. She was supposed to be the leader of the team. She would be fine, she could take it.

Maggie swallowed down a sob, pulled her jacket tighter around herself and headed back into the chilly rain. It would be easier to set up her tent in the woods around the city if she did it before night fell.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Maggie spent the next couple of weeks showering in the school locker rooms and eating the free meals offered at school, plus whatever she could buy with her ever decreasing savings when eating at the school wasn’t an option.

Several weeks after the rains started,  Alex told the team she had managed to convince Kara to stay in her own room, allowing the group to start staying for sleepovers again. The next day, Lucy told them her father is going away to a conference for a while, making her house safe too.

Still, Maggie did not return to any of their houses unless the whole team was staying over. As much as she had been doing it for survival, it had been bothering her from the start to mooch off her friends like that. Every now and then was fine, but at this point? She had surely overstayed her welcome. 

Except, the longer she went having to fend for herself - sleeping in tents and living off discount food - the harder it became for her to continue.

First she realized she was having difficulty concentrating in classes - always falling asleep or spending the class trying to figure out  _ where _ she would sleep next. Or eat next, considering she was almost always hungry now. 

Then her reaction time began dropping. The stress started cutting into her ability to perform and recover as she needed. Her ranger ability having to compensate for the lack of nutrients as well as the increasing injuries.

Her poor reaction time and constant hunger started affecting her performance in soccer. The coach pulled her aside. At first he was worried and understanding, but as the weeks went by with no improvement, he threatened to kick her off the team. That would mean no more gym locker, no more gym showers, and no chance of getting a college soccer scholarship. Maggie panicked and started pouring even more effort into the sport. More money on eating something before practice.

The others finally started to notice the shifting attitude - the snipping and biting comments, the drop in performance both in school and in the battle field, the sense of urgency around soccer. What they couldn’t pinpoint was why. 

Realizing they hadn’t had a sleepover in a while, Alex called for one in her house, hoping they could get Maggie to talk to them and tell them what was wrong.

Maggie, surprising everyone but herself, turned her down.

She was too thin now, and her Ranger healing was not taking care of her injuries at the speed it should anymore. She didn't want them to notice. She didn't want them to worry. She was fine. She could take it.

Her team all had problems of their own, as well as their own family drama. They shouldn't have to also deal with Maggie’s issues. She could just live on school meals. Her powers made her fast enough to grab the leftover food before it got thrown out, and on days where the menu was particularly low in quality, she got a mountain of food the other high schoolers didn't even want to touch.

She could handle this. She  _ is  _ handling this. She just had to hold on a few months, and then she could get a soccer scholarship and get out of the town.

[She refused to think about what she would do if she didn't get the scholarship.]  

It had been almost two months since her birthday, and now Maggie was running low on funds, camping most nights in the woods - rain be damned - and just doing the best she could to survive.

It was finally clear to Alex and Lucy that she was hiding something, but Maggie had gotten pretty good at lying about her circumstances over the weeks. Alex, having seen Maggie eating ramen one too many times, had tried approaching her about it - showing a list of foods she’d tracked Maggie eating and suggestions about improving her diet. Lucy had tried to bring up how she’d noticed Maggie often didn’t seem to be finishing her homework and offered to help.

Maggie loved them, she really did, but their concern was only making her feel more and more guilty about giving them a reason to be concerned in the first place.

Maggie’s stress, fear, isolation and hunger kept mounting, even as she did everything in her power to keep up the facade. Eventually, something had to give.

And eventually, something did. 

 

~*~*~*~

 

Mesogog’s right hand, Zeltrax, launched a major attack against the city. The team was pushed to their limit, and their weakest link couldn’t handle the pressure.

They win, but barely, and not without a lot of things going wrong. Half the team got injured, one of their Zords was destroyed, and three civilians had to be hospitalized.

The others were pissed, and for good reason. 

Maggie screwed up. 

After cleanup was done, and everyone who needed medical attention had gotten it, she put her head down and clenched her teeth, telling herself she deserved the dressing down her team was giving her. She deserved their anger, to be yelled at and blamed. She was the Red Ranger after all. It was her responsibility to protect her team and do whatever it took to make sure they won, and their town was kept safe.

But this time, she was the reason they nearly lost.

And the whole team knew it.

 

~*~*~

 

Maggie ran off as soon as she could.

The others considered going after her, but they were dealing with their own issues after that disastrous fight and let her go. It was a Friday night, so no one thought anything of not seeing her on Saturday. Everyone needed the chance to cool off after the fight. 

Sunday morning what they thought would be the end of the terrible weather proved false as another storm rolled in. Any hope of having their usual training outside was lost in the downpour. The absence of their red ranger just adding to the team’s growing unease.

Maggie hadn’t answered her phone since the fight.

The raptors were restless in their cages but no one was panicking yet. Surely Maggie was safe and dry at her aunt’s house, regardless of how clear she had made it since they met her that she hated being there.

Except she wasn’t.

They all felt it through their bond at the same time Maggie's raptor went crazy in its pen. Alex, Lucy and Kira exchanged a worried glance.

One of them was just attacked. And since everyone was accounted for except Maggie… there was no question as to who it was. 

But no one knew where she was. 

Another echo through the grid and Maggie's raptor, Toothless, took a run at the pen door.

The three active rangers stared at each other in helplessness for a moment. The growls of Maggie’s raptor echo through the cave. Alex looked at the pen. Looked back at the others. Looked at the pen. Lucy caught on as Alex moved to open the pen gate.

“Alex no.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Alex grabbed the raptor’s armor and saddle and slipped into the stall, explaining as she went.

“Clearly Toothless here can feel what’s happening just like we can. Maybe he can track her for us.”

The raptor had held still as Alex strapped the armor on. The moment she finished however, he was off. The three girls had to run at full Ranger speed just to keep him in their sight. The rain was so bad, and they were running so fast, they barely registered that the raptor was leading them deeper and deeper into the woods.

It’s Kira who shouts over the wind and rain as the trio dodged trees.

“Wait - isn’t her aunt’s house more towards town? Not the mountains?”

“The fuck is she doing out here in this weather?” Lucy yelled back, stumbling at a sudden break in the trees.

They could hear the fighting now - the thuds of limbs making contact with other limbs and the nature surrounding the fight. Pausing, the trio glanced around. The clearing they had stopped in clearly bore evidence of fighting. 

It also looked like the site of someone’s camp. 

The collapsed and shredded remains of a tent were tucked between two trees off to one side. A knocked over stack of firewood by a small fire pit. Various belongings scattered among the gouges in the ground.

A cry of pain from a certain raptor they’d let out of their sight drew them back to the matter at hand.

The girls exchanged a look and morphed into their armor.

Breaking through the trees they saw Maggie struggling to hold off Zeltrax himself. Her uniform was covered in streaks of mud, and her left arm was limp at her side. Some parts of her uniform looked soaked with splotches of blood as well. A chorus of “Maggie!” rang out at the sight. 

Maggie turned to look.

Zeltrax took a swing with his weapon.

Toothless ran in to take the blow and went flying, staying down after colliding with a tree.

The girls tried to rush in but Zeltrax took advantage of the distraction to summon more minions. The three split off. Lucy and Alex rushing for their girlfriend while Kira headed for Toothless.

They only make it halfway through the summoned minions when they  _ feel  _ Maggie go down. Pausing mid-motion they all turned to look as Maggie was sent flying backwards, landing only a few yards away from Zeltrax. 

Her armor disappeared, and she lay still where she landed.

Hearts in their throats Lucy and Alex redoubled their efforts.

Lucy managed to break free of the enemy’s ranks right as Zeltrax was picking up Maggie’s limp form. With a cry of “No!” Lucy launched her Drago Sword at him, stopping him from opening a portal out of there. A portal that would take Maggie away from them.

Weaponless, Lucy had no option other than to charge head on - Alex joining as soon as she knocked down the last minion in the way.

Toothless got there first.

He clamped down on Zeltrax’s shoulder from behind, causing him to release his grip on Maggie, dropping her to the mud without a second thought.

Alex and Lucy see red. 

An absent call for Kira to take Maggie back to the cave rang out as fists began to make contact with Zeltrax.

He was getting the beating of a lifetime, and he knew it. After a few moments of accumulating bruises and (probably) broken bones, he turned tail and fled. 

As soon as he was gone, Alex and Lucy exchanged a frantic glance. They demorphed and rushed into each other’s arms.

“Maggie- she was-”

“Shh, Alex, I know, I know.”

“What if she- she looked so-”

“She's going to be okay. She has to be okay.” Lucy was shaking too.

“She was- she was just lying there,” Alex's breathing was getting too fast. “she was bleeding, Luce.”

Alex's eyes trailed down, looking at the marks left on the mud by the fight. Her eyes catched on a line of red. 

Blood?

No, it couldn’t be blood. The color wasn't quite right, and the rain hitting it was not mixing with it.

With a feeling of dread, Alex stepped out of Lucy's arms and bent down to take a closer look. It looked like a piece of fabric. Next to her, Lucy crouched down and picked it up. 

It was a red t-shirt. After Lucy shakes it a bit to remove some of the mud both of them look closer. They exchange a glance when they identify the shirt as part of one of Maggie’s soccer uniforms.

Confusion and fear lanced through both of them.

Standing, they began to take a closer look at the clearing through which they’d ran earlier.

The small fire pit showed signs of recent use despite the rain. A pile of leafy branches were off to the side covering more wood already broken down into the correct size for kindling. A bag was tucked into a tree out of the reach of curious animals. The tent anchor points held despite the damage to its supports. In the ruins of the tent they found more bags, familiar bags, packed to the brim but now also soaked through.

Both Lucy and Alex had enough experience camping to know that, destroyed as it was, this camp had been there for much longer than one weekend.

In the bag in the tree they found food. The cheapest brands sold, most expired. A few Tupperware full of leftover cafeteria food. Leftovers that were already bad when they'd been served fresh and hot.

Shock and denial warred inside the two girls.

Maggie would’ve had no reason to be camping in the woods. It must have been a one time thing. Maybe this was because of the fight and how upset she had been on Friday. Yeah, that must have been it. For sure. 

She hadn't been out here for weeks.

She would have come to them if something was wrong.

She wouldn't have hidden something this big from them.

Except as they looked at the bags around them, the other oddities they'd been noticing for weeks began to add up. 

The weird eating habits. The falling asleep in classes. The panic about soccer and the future. The begging out of hanging out to go to work - and how upset she had been when Haley had chosen to close the cafe.

Horror swirled in their guts.

Blindly they grabbed the soaked bags and raced back to the lab. They had to be wrong. They couldn't accept anything else.

Inside they both knew the only one who could tell them what was going on was Maggie herself, and the last they had seen her, she was being carried unconscious and injured away from a muddy forest clearing.

 

~*~*~

 

The lab was a frantic mess of movement and sound. 

Haley and Tommy were trying to treat Maggie. Calling out to each other for aid in moving trembling limbs, in peeling away soaked clothes and damp hair from fresh and old wounds alike. Small pools of blood were forming around the untreated gouges in one of Maggie's legs while red had already seeped through the bandage on her head.

The sound of wet bags hitting stone caused Kira to jump from where she'd been watching. Wide eyes took in her soaking teammates’ stricken looks and the bags at their feet. Lucy and Alex could tell the moment she made the connection as to where the bags came from and why they were brought back with them.

“No…”

Neither girl said anything in response. Instead they moved to help with Maggie.

Normally their powers would have stopped the worst of the bleeding by the time Maggie had been brought to the lab. From there their powers would begin healing them at a rate that normally wouldn't require more than a single bandage. There shouldn't be any old wounds to heal either.

None of them needed the Ranger bond to know that Maggie’s condition was really bad if she still had injuries from a fight that had been over for days.

 

~*~*~

 

It's in the quiet after the last bandage was placed that Alex and Lucy explained what they found. Explained the way the campsite had been set up, and the placement and contents of the bags.

Much like them, Kira refused to apply logic beyond the fight on Friday.

“Maybe she was just still mad. Maybe she just felt like going camping and forgot to check the weather. Or thought it would clear up. Maybe she just wanted to be alone for a bit.”

Tommy and Haley exchanged grim looks.

Wordlessly, Tommy pulled out his phone and dialed Maggie’s aunt.

Whatever their suspicions about why Maggie was in the woods, they needed to know what was actually going on. From their places on either side of Maggie, Lucy and Alex watched with resignation. They clutched her icy hands a little tighter as the dial tone rang again, and again, and again.

It was just after the fourth ring when Maggie started coughing. It was a wet, wheezing, painful cough.

It was the cough of a sick person.

Healthy people don't get sick immediately after being out in the rain. At least not to the point where they sounded like they were trying to cough out a lung immediately after you got them dry. Power Ranger wounds shouldn’t last more than 24 hours unless they were severe - like a broken bone. And Power Rangers didn't get sick. Ever.

For Maggie to be coughing this bad already meant she'd been sick for at least a day, maybe more, and no one had known.

On Tommy’s second call Maggie’s aunt picked up. The phone was on speaker before a word was even spoken.

Tommy casually explained he was a teacher from school wondering if he could talk to Maggie about her latest project. The aunt’s answer sent ice through everyone's veins.

“I haven’t seen that dyke since her birthday, and good riddance! She won't be coming back here either if she knows what's best."

At the sound of her aunt's voice, Maggie started shivering harder and thrashing weakly, unconsciously trying to break her girlfriends’ grips on her hands so she could wrap her arms around herself. 

Every conscious person in the room saw red, even as most of them were holding back tears.

Alex had half a mind to go beat up Maggie’s aunt, yet one look at Maggie’s bruised body stopped her in her tracks. Meanwhile, Lucy was in shock. Just staring at a wall, her voice shaking when she did the math. 

"Since her birthday. That was almost eight weeks ago. It's been raining for two and a half weeks now.”

Kira and Haley started crying. Alex and Tommy seemed at a loss for what to do with this new knowledge. Lucy’s shaking hand lifted Maggie's shirt a little, drawing everyone’s attention to her bruised torso. Her ribs are all visible, highlighting the dangers of a Ranger’s accelerated metabolism.

For a moment no one says anything.

Then Maggie’s aunt made her presence on the phone known and Tommy takes it off speaker, quietly stepping out of the room to exchange some rather aggressive words with the woman.

The others just wait and watch as Maggie slowly, bit by bit, began to relax.

Surrounded by all three of her teammates and in a warm, dry place, Maggie’s healing finally got the chance to work as it should. Less than an hour after getting patched up, Maggie started breathing a little easier. Eventually, they could all tell she was no longer unconscious, just asleep. They reached out through their bond and sent reassurances of their presence anyways.

Another rumble of ongoing thunder came from outside. It became clear why Maggie hadn’t been sleeping much. They started putting more of the pieces together. Slowly though, because they couldn't, wouldn’t believe their leader, their friend was going through that hell for so long. And never told them.

Certain behavior changes and offhand comments began to make sense. Flinches at contact and changes in attitude began to add up. All the secrecy and effort needed to make the symptoms she couldn’t hide look like normal parts of life suddenly standing out to their scrutiny.

Everything they’d missed. Everything they’d brushed off. Everything they could have done better to notice was glaring them right in the face.

 

~*~*~   
  


Maggie's shivering slowly stopped. After a while she began to wake up. 

She was confused and in pain. She didn't know how she got to where she was - just that she was dry and warm and it hurt to move too much. Her head felt foggy and muffled and floaty, and it helped a little with the pain.

When she managed to open her eyes all she could see was the concerned faces of her girlfriends on either side of her.

She smiled slightly, her mouth trying to form words, but her body pulled her back into the land of dreams before she could get even one out.

The others let her sleep, gutted by how happy Maggie had looked at seeing Lucy and Alex. After all, the last time all three of them had spoken, they'd been blaming Maggie for messing up during a dangerous battle, and she had run off while holding back tears.

They hadn't known then that it wasn't just that she wasn't fighting properly, it was that she couldn't. She had been too hungry, too tired and stressed and injured to be in any fight, let alone lead it. 

She had done it anyways, and even though the fight had been rough, the team had come out on top of it.

And they had all still yelled at her until she ran off into the rain.

And yet now, cold and in pain after surviving an attack, she had smiled as though waking up to their faces was enough to make everything right with the world.

The knowledge of how much she cared for them hit them where it already hurt.

And then her eyes had closed again.

 

~*~*~

 

It was decided through looks and gestures that Maggie would moved to Tommy’s guest room with Kira to keep watch while the others discussed what to do.

A lot of yelling and crying and raging and hugging occured in the dozen plus hours that Maggie remained asleep. The whole team struggled to process everything they had learned in the last day.

Tommy realized that for all the things he'd seen in his long time as a ranger, there were still dark sides of humanity he'd never seen before. Terrible things that happened that he had no control over, and that the Grid could do nothing to fix. Sometimes the worst of monsters were human after all.

After the arguing Alex and Lucy were coaxed into eating something. Then they immediately returned to Maggie's bedside and eventually fell asleep leaning on each other. They wake up hours later, their Ranger bond letting them know Maggie was coming to.

  
  


~*~*~

 

Maggie could tell something was different as soon as she started waking up. While she could still hear the rain all around her, it now sounded distant and muffled, and not like it normally did when it bounced off the roof of her tent. She could also tell there was a nearby source of light through her closed eyelids.

By the time she felt fully awake, confusion dominated her thought process. She had no idea where she was or why she wasn't in her tent. The feel of bandages and a proper mattress meant something probably happened, she just couldn't figure out what.

Seeing the concerned faces of her girlfriends looking down at her sent the memories rushing back.

The fight. Her campsite. The team showing up. Being knocked out.

As it had been almost 15 hours since she'd been knocked out, the worst of her injuries had had time to heal. However, seeing how deeply she was sleeping the others had decided not to disturb her, so the bandages hadn't been changed or removed after serving their purpose.

Looking up at her girlfriends’ expressions, Maggie felt a knot of tension form in her stomach. Lucy looked like she's been crying, and Alex like she was trying not to cry. 

When Maggie opened her mouth to speak, Alex and Lucy stopped her. They knew full well that they needed to talk, but neither of them felt quite ready to hear whatever Maggie was going to say.

So instead, they dragged her to the kitchen and put a mountain of food in front of her, telling her they can talk after she eats. Maggie looked sheepish and shy at first, but the moment she took the first bite she seemed to realize just how hungry she’d been, and she immediately started wolfing everything down.

Maggie, being well aware they have to talk when she is done eating, tried to slow down, but she’d gone without a good, hot meal for too long, and before she knew it, she was scraping her plate clean.

 

~*~*~

 

Maggie seemed to find every part of the kitchen more interesting to look at than her girlfriends. After a few minutes of awkward silence, she took a deep breath and started, “Guys-”

“Why didn't you tell us?”

Lucy winced at Alex's harsh tone. Maggie flinched a little, but then her eyes hardened. She raised her head and looked Alex straight in the eye. 

“Tell you  _ what _ , Alex?”

Lucy and Alex were caught off guard by the fire in Maggie's voice, but Maggie was just starting. 

“Tell you how my aunt couldn't stand the sight of me, how she only put up with me so child protection services wouldn't throw my parents behind bars? Tell you how, for the last four years, she hasn't missed a chance to tell me how much of a burden I am, how unwanted? How even long before she kicked me out I already tried to spend as little time as possible anywhere  _ near _ that house?”

Her eyes were glistening, the first tear slipping out as she paused for breath. In front of her, Alex and Lucy had both started crying, but neither moved, neither spoke or tried to interrupt Maggie. 

“Or, did you want me to tell you how, even with all the warning I got, even with almost  _ four years  _ of warning, I still couldn't make it on my own when she threw me out? How I couldn't get a place for myself so I ended up parading through the couches of every person who seemed to give half a damn about me? 

How the only hope I have for a future, for a chance to get out of this town, this state, depends on me getting that soccer scholarship to college, but I can't focus on soccer if I'm hungry and I can't buy food without working which I can't do because I'm either at soccer or training or needed for a battle? How it seems like I can't do anything without burdening someone else to take care of me? How I know I'm just not good enough to be a Red, let alone you girlfriend?”

At this point Maggie was no longer able to continue. She full on broke down in front of the other two, a sob wrenching it's way free from her throat as her knees hit the ground. In moments her back was pushed up against the wall under the table so that she was both shielded from view and from contact.

Everything about the position screamed of something Maggie had done before. Of it being a deliberate placement of her body in the most protected place she could find in that moment, broken as she was in the kitchen of their mentor’s home.

Lucy and Alex remained frozen for a handful of seconds before practically diving to the ground on either side of her. For all their rush to get down on her level though, when it came to wrapping her in their arms each movement was slow and deliberate.

For a long while Maggie simply sat there and cried, wrapped in the arms of the two people she cared for the most.

Then their quiet mutterings began to make it past her internalized fear and hopelessness.

“We’re here Maggie.”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

“Let us help you.”

“We thought we lost you.”

“You mean so much to us Maggie, please don't ever scare us like this again.”

“We love you.”

“We love you.”

And slowly, ever so slowly, as her sobs start to subside, Maggie found that she just might be able to believe them.


End file.
